


Solus

by Turnandfacethepaige



Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Angst, Infinity War spoilers, M/M, Pining, back on the Strordo bus again!, but - Freeform, i guess?, yeah seriously big infinity war spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 17:05:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14794505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turnandfacethepaige/pseuds/Turnandfacethepaige
Summary: He needed to find the source of what was enfolding around him. If he could find it at all.





	Solus

**Author's Note:**

> Okay before anything, Infinity War spoilers. Like BIG spoilers. 
> 
> A little piece about Mordo reacting to the events of Infinity War

The moment passed in a second.

It jarred him, felt like something had run its hand the wrong way through his hair, dragged nails upward against his flesh, leaving raised trails of red in its wake.

He had been sitting down in the library of the abandoned warehouse that he had conquered for his hideout, flicking carefully through one of the delicate leather-bound books that he had ripped from the bloody and shattered fingers of the wizard he had drained dry of magic, looking for an answer on how to break open a seal on a Welsh sorcerer’s house, who seemed to object to Mordo coming in, draining him of magic, and nicking all of his books in the process.

And then it had happened - a sort of flicker, something so small he only just caught it.

All his years of magic - absorbing and practising it until it flowed within him as easily as blood, even before he made it his mission to go and stuff himself with as much magic he could take back from the sorcerer’s irresponsible enough to have it - had gifted him a keen sense of disturbance of the world around him, any shifts in the smooth water of reality.

He had been able to sense the moment that a god had fallen from the sky, all those years ago. He had been able to sense the moment, no matter how small it had been, when a soul had moved from its fleshy cradle and escape into a world of flinty glass and shattered realities, and as he had been able to grow stronger, feeding off the power of the sorcerers her had captured and defeated, he had been been able to feel something greater - like the shifting of sand around the bottom of a river, winding around his bare feet - something he had been unable to explain, or even understand, until a day ago.

The day when Tony Stark had been declared missing; the day the ships had appeared in the skies above the earth.

The day when the monster had arrived.

He had heard of him - this monster, this creature, whoever he was - before, from the Ancient One.

He was a monster - a devourer of worlds - a destroyer - a soulless gaping void that sucked in life, and sought only power.

But even the Ancient One, who had lived for so long, who had gone up against such evil that no human mind could even comprehend, was unable to speak of who he was, or even what he was. She could barely speak his name. Whenever she mentioned him, her face would flicker with horror, a shudder running through her, as though she could only too clearly remember him, or see him before her.

He was after the Eye of Agamotto, he wanted it, craved it, and there would be nothing that limited him, nothing that he would not do to get it.

Mordo had been told the story of the monster by the Ancient One, in hushed tones, when he had first been taken to see the relic, glowing gentle green, in the sanctum. But he hadn’t been told anything else, nothing but how he had to guard the relic from the monster, no matter what the cost.

But then -

But then Stephen had taken the relic for himself. And with it the responsibility of protecting it.

Stephen had decided it would be his decision to meddle with time, to bend it and break it to his whim in order to defeat Dormammu, and who was he to tell Stephen what he could and couldn’t do?

And so Mordo had abandoned the relic, along with the sanctuary, the way of life of the sorcerers, and Stephen.

And then a day ago, Tony Stark had gone missing. And with the news reports and the newspapers filled with photographs and excited articles of Iron Man and some teenage brat fighting off two aliens in the park, were eyewitness accounts of a man emerging from a glowing circle, a glowing green eye at his neck. A man standing beside Stark, fighting side by side, to defeat the monsters, to fight back against the monster that had come to this earth for the relic.

And a day ago, Mordo knew Stephen Strange had vanished along with Stark.

He had shrugged away the tinge of loss that followed that knowledge, covered it with his cloak, and sneaked off to gather more magic, hunt more sorcerers, under the cover of the confusion and panic.

But then it had happened - the moment, this sense, a tingling moment that something had occurred - and it had stopped Mordo in his tracks.

He slowly put down his book, standing to his feet, watching dust mites flicker in the space he had just vacated. The window opposite had been boarded up with rotting planks, slips of light seeping through the cracks, dripping across the dusty floor.

Nothing felt off - at least not physically. He felt as he always had, now only aware that something had occurred. Something he wanted an answer for.

Making his way to the window, he peered through, into the street below.

Nothing seemed off. The people below were mingling on the streets, throngs of bodies interweaving in the streets, chattering and laughing in the sun.

He frowned. He wouldn’t have felt something like this and not see something occur - even if it was only a small feeling, even if it was only a small change in the world before him.

And then a shriek echoed, high and piercing above the people, and people turned as one, to see a girl, grabbing at another, screaming, as her friend dissipated, collapsing in her arms into a pile of ash.

Mordo felt his heart drop within him.

Shrieks and yells rose from the street, as ash began to fill the air, rising up into the wind, and Mordo could smell it, bitter and sharp and acrid, even as he jerked back in horror from the window.

This wasn’t magic - this wasn’t magic like he had ever heard about before, and it was nothing like he had seen in his life.

He turned, stumbling across the room, making his way to the table stacked with books and scraps of relics, chunks of gems and glittering vials of blood, to the thick chunk of crystal, even as the screams began to get louder and louder.

The crystal was a fat slab, clear and clean, an unorthodox method of scrying, given the lessons the Ancient One had given him. But as he snatched it from its soft cloth bag, fumbled for the water that he splashed across the surface to make him see, he found that he couldn’t care, couldn’t care less what the Ancient One thought.

He needed to find the source of what was enfolding around him. If he could find it at all.

The water winked at him from where it was poured into the dip of the carved rock as he spread his hands across its surface, and closing his eyes. The world was made of reflections, whether it be from a window or another puddle - any reflective surface that existed was fodder for him to use to seek out an explanation as to what was happening, any sort of answer.

Maybe the monster would appear before him, horrific and deadly, just as it had appeared to the Ancient One, and his stomach twisted at the weight of the understanding.

Maybe it would be something else - something less magical. After all, aliens had come before, with tombstone teeth and beady little eyes greedy for chaos and destruction. And after all, it was alien ships that had arrived on Earth, and it had been aliens that had caused this trouble. Perhaps he could gains something from them.

Or maybe it was something else - something worse. Something more terrible than he could have imagined.

With trembling hands, Mordo concentrated, pushing aside thoughts of monsters and aliens and a deep, unsettling feeling of the unknown that awaited him, and set his thoughts down, placing them towards the back of his mind, peeling apart the his clouded thoughts and dreams away from the harsh light of the reality he existed in, in all planes that he knew it came in. To scry, to peep at any sort of understanding of the world around, he was to withdraw his burbling conscious, to open up his mind to the magic in the world around him, his fingers twitching, searching, for the delicate, silken threads that held together the place and time in front of him, that when tugged, would reveal another place, another time, another face, another voice.

A scream, harsh and terrified, grated against his mind, and he winced, fingers tugging back at the sound of pure terror. He stretched them again, willing to calm himself, to look beyond this place, to ignore everything, no matter how much it hurt, and to seek, to search, for the answers he craved.

His fingers twitched slightly, as his mind began to relax even under the cacophony of noise that drifted from outside, as the familiar feeling of magic thrumming in his body, softly pounding like a second heartbeat within his veins, began to build up within him. Around him, the atmosphere began to crackle slightly, hot air twitching and contorting as magic seeped around him, from him.

Then, beneath his left ring finger, he felt something press up against the pad of his finger, soft and delicate. He pressed down, testing out the solidity of it, and it pressed back, silky and thin, but strong and sturdy.

A thread to pull and unravel.

With his ring finger and thumb - both trembling even as he stubbornly tried to pretend they weren’t - Mordo pressed down on the thread and gave it a gentle tug. A tug was all that it needed. Any harder and he’d be ripping apart a chunk of the fabric of reality that wove itself around him, and with whatever hell was being raised outside, he didn’t need that any time soon.

The thread bowed beneath the weight, before it suddenly snapped taught and rigid, a tiny zing of magical energy burning beneath his fingertips, and Mordo knew the opening he had found was opening before him.

He opened his eyes.

Below him, the surface of the water shone and trembled, rippling as something snaked and writhed beneath it, in the deep crystalline surface that reached out far beyond the world that Mordo could see before him.

The water was still clear, but even as he watched, Mordo could see the surface clouding, a whiteness spreading like milk in water, faster than he could blink, and in a beat, the surface was clouded over, swirling, churning, as a surface was forced open in some distant thrown-away place of this universe. The water seemed to grow thicker, a consistency like old paint, with something solid and thick beginning to form on the upper right hand side, and a swirl of stark crimson began to grow, a Charybdis emerging from the depth of the crystal.

He held his breath, even as a drop of sweat began to trek down the side of his face, itchy and infuriating. His lips were pressed into a thin line, and even as the rest of his body remained perfectly still, his fingers twitched and tensed over the churning surface of the water.

The crimson began to grow larger, and Mordo frowned in annoyed confusion. The crimson wasn’t growing larger, colouring the water within the crystal, but instead taking a shape, a sort of mountainous shape, as though a mountain was being viewed from a distance.

He concentrated, fingers tensing, trying to gain a greater grip of the thread that still remained within his fingers, pushing forward to force open this glimpse into the universe, to understand.

No sooner had he pressed harder, than the shape began to grow and enlarge, the quality growing stronger and stronger, until suddenly, the crimson shocked into a clear, sharp image, that made Mordo’s heart skip a beat.

The crimson wasn’t a mountain. It was a cloak.

And wrapped in that cloak was -

Stephen.

Mordo knew it - could see it - see the delicate facial features that were beginning to scramble into place as he demanded more, could see the high cheekbones and sharp halcyonic eyes even from so far away.

He looked like he was sitting down, maybe on a low wall or a raised piece of ground, and surrounded by what looked like the crumbling bones of an old citadel, with a dusty orange sky painted around his lone figure.

But as the image grew in quality, the details clearing until it was almost like Mordo was merely looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope, it began to dawn on him that something was wrong.

Stephen was almost slouching, something he had never seen Stephen ever do, even when he found him, desperate and wretched on Kamar-Taj’s front door, and the way he carried himself seemed as though he had the entire earth sinking on his shoulders, crushing him beneath the weight of it.

Mordo found himself squinting at his body, studying for dashes of blood or splashes of curses that could have been flung on him by an alien - by the monster - before he could stop himself, and reign back.

It was merely a habit, he told himself, that he had picked up at Kamar-Taj, his eyes sneakily glancing at the new-comer out of the corner of his eye, whenever he felt he wasn’t looking, to make sure that broken hands and a broken ego weren’t the only things he had, and had snapped his gaze away, scolding himself whenever he did. Stephen was a grown man, the same as him, and he didn’t need a baby sitter checking on him to make sure he was okay.

It didn’t stop him from doing it though. And it was only when he too began to notice Stephen’s gaze lingering on his bare arms during training practise, on his side profile as he turned to give him a new lecture - even the time he had caught Stephen practically checking his ass out before turning his gaze away like a child who had been caught red handed in the sweet jar.

Except they weren’t children - and neither could they afford to act like them. There had been danger, zealots and traitors to worry about over whether or not Stephen liked Mordo or vice versa. And so whatever they had - if they had had anything at all - had been shoved away, and roughly shut up in a place they couldn’t reach.

But now here he was - maybe at the end of the world for all he knew, with monsters roaming for secrets that needed to be hidden, children collapsing into ash into the street, and spaceships hanging like blood-soaked claws in the sky - and still he felt himself falter.

He had almost forgotten that he had come looking for answers to what was happening outside. Forgotten it as soon as he had seen that damn cape.

But now - now he couldn’t afford to fumble around his relationship with Stephen.

He leaned in closer, trying to see, trying to ignore what lurked inside him, his fingers pressing down so hard on the thread that he could see his knuckle bulge beneath his skin.

Stephen looked exhausted, almost like his essence had been depleted, the cape hanging off his shoulders like a wilted flower, the smirking, prideful confidence that had been evident in his every step, and Mordo wondered what he had been fighting that had sucked the energy from him.

Perhaps it was the monster. Perhaps it was something worse.

What else could it have been? Another creature from another dimension sneaking its way into the cracks? Some powerful sorcerer who had dragged him away from his position on earth?

No. It couldn’t be. Stephen had gone with Stark, gone to wherever they had been needed - which apparently was this place, this ashy rock of old cities and dusty skies. Stark had gone to discover the source of the aliens -

And the aliens had meant the monster.

Had Stephen faced off against him? Had he fought him, hand to hand? Had he been able to win?

Perhaps - after all, Stephen looked exhausted, but he looked like he had fought a fair fight to survive.

But then the ash? The screams? The horror? How could that have existed if he had won?

What had happened on that place?

As his mind raced with the questions, all piling up one after another like a collision - something not to be done when scrying, when a single wrong thought or slip in concentration would tear up the delicate threads, and tear him away from his watch point into another place - Stephen very slowly looked up.

And if the questions came quickly, they all but evaporated in the face of what Mordo saw before him.

Mordo stared at what now shone out from the water - at dusty, blood-slashed cheekbones, at eyes that seemed so much larger, so much blanker, so much weighed down than he had seen them before, when he had made his exit in Hong Kong before his shocked gaze, and, with a sinking punch to his gut, the dull, empty chain around his neck, devoid of the green stone that Stephen had declared his own by standing away from the Ancient One’s teachings and standing before Dormammu all those months ago.

Stephen didn’t look exhausted - he looked _empty_.

He raised his face, his profile still as dashingly handsome as before at Kamar-Taj, but an air of helpless defeat, like that of a blind man facing down into oblivion, was with him, hanging off his shoulders like that damn cape.

He looked up, and for a moment, for an earth-shattering moment, he seemed to look straight at Mordo, grey eyes meet brown, and Mordo felt his stomach plummet, knowing that look, knowing that air, knowing it so well because he had seen it so many times before, and he knew, knew beyond hope and reason and logic what was going to happen, what he was going to see.

Stephen parted his lips, and his voice, deep and rumbling, but croaky in a way that made Mordo’s stomach lurch, like he had fought for success and had only achieved a fistful of failure, ‘There was no other way.’

The side of his body began to crumble, the cloth turning inwards, as though he was a piece of clothing to be folded away and packed neatly into a cupboard, as blue sunk into brown, warm richness into a sour dryness, that seemed too delicate, too innocent to contort and rip away someone’s soul, someone’s soft, scarred flesh, and drifted away, before his horrified eyes, into the rising wind of an barren planet, so many miles away from home.

And in the final moment of whispered words, before the ash consumed him, Mordo had a vision that eclipsed bloodied cheekbones and dusty red skies, and chipped wet crystals and dusty old books - of forbidden looks and lingered glances in training courtyards over spitting relics and sling-rings, of trailing touches over scarred, raised flesh, and the winces that came from it, of grey eyes tracing movements in a way that was too warm and soft for a clinical surgeon’s gaze, of green robes and blue trailing after each other, a flurry of cloth and hands, reaching and grabbing for one another as the world twisted and turned into fractured mirrors and glass - and even in the shock of realising what was happening, knowing that he was seeing something that could not be changed, would not be changed, could not ever, ever be changed, Mordo wildly dreamed, for one desperate, fleeting moment, of all the worlds that they could have belonged too, and all the opportunities that they could have taken.

It was gone like a dream.

He blinked, and Stephen was gone, only a floating, trailing cloak, left hanging uselessly in the air as the only sign that anyone had existed before it.

His stomach lurked violently, and he jerked back in shock. His hands flew away from the bowl, and the thread snapped audibly, before vanishing like Stephen, slipping away into its normal position in the fabric of reality.

Mordo stumbled backwards clumsily, tripping into the crate that he had been keeping behind him to sit on and pore over old books.

In all his years - in all his time - he had never seen anything like that. Neither magic nor any man-made power.

Stephen had been strong, even Mordo could see that. He saw how Stephen had learnt so quickly at Kamar-Taj, how he had taken on the Eye like one would simply change coats, and had learned to use it.

Stephen had been strong and even he had fallen.

Mordo was stuffed with the magic of hundreds of other sorcerers, their blood and their secrets flowing in each vein, with every blood cell, and even now, with all that power, and all that knowledge, even he knew that whatever had happened to Stephen could have happened to him, and he would be in the same position as Stephen had been to stop it.

It was the monster - that he knew, he was now sure of it - in his quest for the relic.

And if what he had done was him merely taking one relic, then who knew what he could do if he had others? What kind of horror could that monster inflict upon others if he so wished?

But there the answers could only flow on, a never ending river, and Mordo would be none the wiser.

He sat there, cold in the brisk breeze that fluttered through the boarded up window, and listened to the commotion outside, of the shrieks and wails, and knew that whatever was happening was far beyond his reach, beyond anyone’s reach.

He couldn’t stop this - even with his power. Even if he had followed after Stephen and asked him to remain with him, by his side, to fight together and live together, and all that could have followed because of that -

Even if he had done that, he knew that this may still have occurred.

Mordo was a blind man facing oblivion, and he had no idea how to fight back against the crawling darkness.

He couldn’t return to the sanctum, to Kamar-Taj. His actions in Hong Kong had made sure of that.

He couldn’t go after Wong - Wong would surely throw him to the dirt and kick him away like Mordo had done to him.

The Ancient One - his teacher, his master - she too was gone, but gone further than Mordo could reach.

And Stephen - whatever he had been, whatever he could have been, whatever he was to him - had gone.

So many people, in so little time - gone forever.

The world could be his for the taking, he could go out now, under the chaos of confusion and seep the magic from the sorcerers, reap all that he could and flee, and know that he could get away with it until order set in.

But every time he blinked, he saw Stephen, burning deep into the sockets of his skull, into the bleached memory of his brain, exhausted eyes with no spark bubbling behind them, his bloodied skin crashing and crushing, fluttering into ask in the breeze, disappearing with no way of telling that he’d be back, and he felt sick.

Mordo remembered Hong Kong, the way Stephen had gazed at him, heartbroken and almost longing, pleading with him to stay, like he would do anything if it meant Mordo wouldn’t turn his back on him. Stephen, who had reached out to him, who had become a friend quickly, and something more even quicker.

Stephen, who had promised he would stay.

Stephen, who was gone.

Fighting back against the monster, no matter how implausible or insane, was not an option. He was alone. He had abandoned everyone he knew in his quest for power; and now even they had abandoned him.

Mordo could not fight a monster, not alone, not without help.

But all the help had gone in a flutter of dark blue and ash.

And Mordo was alone

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah I saw infinity war and the Russo brothers personally took my heart and broke it in two on the pavement - BUT I didn’t see any sign of Mordo or anything about Mordo, so I decided (as soon as I recovered) to write something about him. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who’s left kudos and comments on all my fics! It means a lot and it keeps me going! Thank you and I hope you all enjoyed this!!


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